Spirit of Lost Angels (11 page)

Several weeks after we buried Armand, I was sitting in his chair by the hearth, scribbling down my thoughts. I hoped it might take away some of the loneliness, the sensation of being so utterly lost. Now I understood the wretchedness Maman felt when Félicité, Félix and Papa died —
la
mélancolie
that turned her from religion and, ultimately, cost my mother her life.

Slow footsteps approached, but I didn’t have to turn to know whose they were. I recoiled from Léon’s breath, close to my ear.

‘Why do you tremble, Victoire, when I come near? Since Papa died, you’re like some hovering ghost, not with us at all. You must master this grief.’

I shook my head, trying to shrug off the clutter that fogged my mind and made the edges of everything cottony.

‘Adélaïde and Pauline are taking care of the household and your children. The boys and I work the farm, so you have no need to concern yourself about that. As for the inn,’ he said. ‘Well there are so few guests I fear
L’Auberge des Anges
must close its doors.’

In some chamber of my mind, so distant I could reach only a thread of it, I knew I should be concerned about that, but I felt no sadness. All I felt was something slipping away from me, like when I’d caught a river trout with my bare hand and no matter how tightly I clutched it, the fish slithered, slowly, from my grasp.

‘He’s gone, Victoire,’ Léon said.
‘
We are both free now — free to be together. Papa even said as much. That afternoon … at the river, you spoke of divorce. Did you mean if divorce was allowed, you might have considered being with me?’

I could not answer him, and the fervour in his black eyes seared a hole in my flesh.

‘Papa gave us his blessing. What is wrong? You remained loyal to my father — to your affectionate, comfortable marriage, but you cannot deny your real love has always been with me.’

Still I said nothing.

‘You believe you no longer care for anything, Victoire. If only you would let me, just once, into your bed. Let me lie beside you and give you comfort, you might not feel so bereft.’

I did not know what made me rise from my fireside place, and cast my nonsensical jumbles of words aside, but I let Léon guide me to bed.

‘Thank you,’ I said, leaning into the circle of his arms, inhaling his soft whispers. ‘It does feel less … less painful.’

‘I promised my father I’d take care of you, remember?’

Léon smiled, and I could not bring myself to tell him that beyond the sensation of unburdening myself, there was nothing more. The passion, the unbearable ache, I’d always felt for him had vanished along with his father.

***

The snow stole into Lucie one early December night like a silent seductress. It sculpted the Monts du Lyonnais into a dizzying snowscape. It embraced the vineyards, draped itself across fallow fields and vines, and kissed the naked limbs of the trees. Seven days of heavy falls took us into 1784.

When the snow stopped, a violent north wind flared up and blew for three weeks. I’d never known such cold that split large trees like flimsy paper and froze wheat and oat seeds underground.

The air crackled and froze the Vionne River so deeply that carts crossed it with no fear of breaking the ice. Birds hit by the chill in mid-flight plummeted to the ground and the frigid air struck down passing journeymen, soldiers and beggars, along the roadside.

Madeleine, Blandine and Gustave gave me great comfort through that winter as I read to them and watched them play together, warm and safe beside the hearth.

‘Two of the cows are dead,’ Léon said. ‘We must bring the rest of the animals indoors, even the barn and stables are too cold.’

So we hauled them all into the house — the two remaining cows, the horse, the pigs, the fowl and the sheep.

‘Villagers help each other through hard times,’ Léon said, and just as Armand would have done, he brought the newly destitute people from the countryside around Lucie, whose unheated homes were exposed to the wind. He also brought Noëmie’s family from their hut in the woods.

It made me think of Père Joffroy, when he gave us the church room, and I welcomed those worse off than us into the warmth of our spacious inn room.

‘The
savants
say it is all because of this volcano,’ the blacksmith said, as man and beast huddled around our fireplace. ‘They say the temperature has gone as low as it possibly can and predict the harshest winter, with permanent frost.’ He spread his fingers and rubbed his hands close to the flames. I would have liked to offer him, and the others, a beaker of wine, but our stocks were all but gone.

‘Some are now down to making bread from acorns, bracken, even pine bark,’ a silk-weaver woman murmured. ‘I’ve seen people so hungry they eat the bark off trees and what grass they can dig up from beneath the snow and ice.’

‘Many are dead from the dysentery,’ Noëmie said, ‘so they have to bury them in shared graves.’

‘Not that those spoilt royals are doing anything for our wretched situation,’ the blacksmith said. ‘What with the tithe we must pay the priest.’

‘It is not our overworked priest who profits from the tithe,’ I said. ‘Père Joffroy is as poor as his flock, living beside the Church and surviving on the pittance he earns from weddings, baptisms and funerals. No, it is the Church that benefits from the tithe
,
and everybody knows the Church pays no taxes and that its leaders come from the aristoc-’

‘
Oh là là
, don’t talk to me about the loathsome
sang bleus
,’ the baker said with a scowl. ‘Always worming their way out of taxes.’

‘It doesn’t help them much,’ Grégoire said. ‘The travellers tell us the bourgeoisie — the merchants, doctors and lawyers — are far better off these days than the aristocrats.’ He looked around the gathered villagers and I felt the same pride as when Papa had narrated his stories.

‘All I know is, at the end of the day we keep less than a fifth of our earnings,’ the silk-weaver woman said. ‘And we are told the silk looms of Lyon will soon be at a standstill.’ She waved an arm. ‘While our country’s finances are in a state, the Queen amuses herself going to horse-races, operas and balls, and, they say, buying three or four new dresses every week!’

‘She has birthed another son,’ the quarry man said.

‘Ha, the gossipers whisper that once again, the King is not the father,’ the weaver said. ‘But the Queen’s lover, the seductive Count Axel Von
je ne sais quoi
.’

She sniggered and I laughed along with the others.

In those instances of camaraderie, surrounded by friends and family, the warmth of those village bonds abated my distress; the creeping misery I could not truly shrug off.

Grégoire’s second child was born just days after my twenty-third birthday in March of 1785.

‘We’ll call her Mathilde,’ Grégoire said, his voice brimming with tenderness as he stroked his newborn’s soft pink face. ‘Mathilde Félicité Charpentier.’

‘What a fine, strong name,’ I said.

Mathilde’s rosebud lips pursed, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn she was smiling. ‘Come, Madeleine, Blandine, Gustave, say hello to your new cousin,’ I said.

‘Isn’t she the loveliest child God sent to this earth?’ my brother said.

Françoise smiled, latching the baby onto her breast.

I laughed. ‘Of course she is. They are all God’s loveliest children, and I hope you will let me teach her to read and write too, like Emile. Remember what Maman said — it is equally as important for a girl to know the literacy skills.’

‘You shall teach them the letters,’ Grégoire said. ‘And I’ll tell them the stories — every one of their grandfather’s legends.’

‘Oh yes, uncle Grégoire, tell us another story,’ Madeleine said. ‘Please, Maman let me stay here while you get water.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘but I won’t be long.’

I held a twin’s hand in each of mine as we continued on, to the river. The Vionne was running high and proud with the spring thaw. Scores of daises and poppies dotted the slope, the breeze randomly orchestrating their faces, and trees, pregnant with buds, bristled with birdsong.

The sun warming my face, I knelt beside the mill that turned the grain into wheat and rye flour and watched Blandine and Gustave play. I smiled at their squeals of glee as they plucked daisies and tumbled about on the fresh grass.

Once I filled my copper cistern with water, I put it aside, cupped my hands and drank the clear water, the same emerald green of the jewels in the house of Saint-Germain; the colour of my eyes, so Léon had once claimed.

Such a long time since he’d called me
Mademoiselle
aux yeux de la rivière
, it might only exist in my imagination.

I tilted my face to the sky, a blue so sharp it almost hurt my eyes. I inhaled the scent of willows, spiced primroses and the fruity odour of fresh grass. Nature’s perfumes filled the void a little, but no matter how deeply I breathed, my chest remained tight as a drum, as if the air couldn’t get in properly.

I began plucking the young dandelion greens with which I would make soup for our evening supper, our single daily meal since the disastrous winter. The hunger a permanent ache in my stomach — or perhaps it was this desperate sadness — I tried not to think of food as I watched the twins frolicking like new lambs.

‘Stay away from the edge,’ I warned.

Trapped in the updraught of the breeze, my voice trembled like a frightened heartbeat as I recalled the recent rumours of desperate land-workers casting their young into the river like unwanted kittens — mouths they could ill-afford to feed.

My basket full of dandelions, I sat for a moment, the young grass caressing my bare feet. My cheeks felt flushed from the day’s sun, Armand’s earthy smell tickled my nostrils and my skin prickled, as I imagined my husband come to sit by my side.

‘The fatigue beats me like some relentless whip, Armand,’ I said. ‘I fear I can’t go on. There are no eggs for the market, no vegetables. I don’t know what will become of the children and the farm.’

I’d not brought my cloak, but its weight pressed on me as if it were slung across my shoulders. Shadows crossed and darkened my mind, my eyes ached with the sunlight, the lids hanging so heavy I had to fight to stop them closing. I felt an urgent need to keep them open, or Armand might leave me again.

A twittering bird startled me. I must have closed my eyes, perhaps even dozed. Surely it could have only been for a moment. At first I wondered about the silence, then I realised the twins were no longer beside me.

‘Blandine, Gustave!’ I jumped up. ‘Where are you?’ I squinted into the setting sun and saw them, down by the water’s edge.

I beckoned, calling them to come back, but Blandine didn’t answer, and kept throwing pebbles into the water, skipping closer to the swiftly flowing river with each new pebble. Her brother was crouched on the shore, beside her, playing with the gravel.

I called again, louder. ‘Blandine, Gustave!’ I picked up my basket and the cistern and hurried towards them.

***

My legs are so heavy I have to drag my feet for every step. Why do the children not heed my calls? Do I speak too softly? Do I speak at all?

The twins are near the water’s edge. So close. Too close now. Blandine skips in, then her brother. Deeper, deeper they go. Up to their knees, their waist, their shoulders.

But the river is too icy for swimming. Why are we all standing in the freezing water?

White smocks swirl beside me, and rush away, a giant hand tugging them downstream. Further, faster. Chestnut curls darken beneath the blur of green. The birdsong ceases. Willow leaves trap the breeze and the air is still. The river flows no more.

***

‘However did Blandine and Gustave get away from you?’ someone said, but I didn’t know this person.

‘How … it happen?’

‘Terrible … tragic …’

I gazed up at the circle of faces, not recognising any of them. Those faces without names pored over mine, so close I smelt their rancid breath and felt the spittle droplets of their chatter wet my cheeks. They were asking so many questions I couldn’t concentrate on any single one. I turned my head, the tears pooling in my cheeks and leaking onto my bed.

‘The water be-bewitched my Bland-Blandine,’ I said in a voice that was not mine. ‘Come back … come back. I called … kept calling. She walked right in.’

‘And Gustave?’ I recognised Grégoire’s voice, and his face, an odd milk-white mask. He held Madeleine, who stared, wide-eyed, as if she was terrified of something. Even as I desperately wanted to take her, I couldn’t hold my little girl.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ I couldn’t stop shaking my head. ‘G-Gustave wouldn’t listen … I beg-begged him to come back … not to follow her. Went into the river … beloved sister. St-stumbled.’ I swallowed my sobs. ‘Everything they did, together. Always together.’

I could no longer bear their stares, and flung my forearms across my face. ‘Babies — my angels — I couldn’t reach them.’

People kept patting my arm and asking more questions, but still I could barely answer them.

I didn’t know how I left my bed, or got to Saint Antoine’s.

‘Another tragedy of
la Vionne violente
,’ the villagers said, as Père Joffroy buried Blandine and Gustave in the same grave, leaving the world as they had entered it — together.

The grief, the darkness that had begun when Armand left me, rushed in torrents and swamped my ragged senses. I could not even weep for what I had lost because I too felt dead.

‘You must eat, Victoire. Adélaïde and Pauline have made
potage
for you. A little dark bread?’ I think it was Léon speaking, and I supposed we were back at
L’Auberge
, but I couldn’t answer him, and turned away. I wanted to ask where my twins were but when I opened my mouth, no words came.

Adélaïde and Pauline rubbed the kettle with lard, boiled water and chopped bits of bread into it, but still I couldn’t eat. I shivered and dragged the hood of my cloak further over my head, and in the mirror above the hearth, I no longer recognised the face veiled in a gaunt white nothingness.

Adélaïde and Pauline shook their heads, muttering things of which I made out only snatches, ‘… madness got her …
mélancolie
… drowned …’

‘
La guérisseuse
has come for you, Victoire,’ Léon said.

The healing woman held a beaker to my lips. ‘Just a little tea, Victoire, to drive this terrible demon from you.’

Demon?

I pushed her hand away. I did not want her poison.

‘A little of this one then?’ She held a different beaker to my lips. ‘Your maman used to make this remedy, you remember?’

I stared at her. No, I could not remember. I could not recall a single thing.

‘She would make it from Saint John’s flowers, before the Midsummer feast.’ I shivered at the touch of
la guérisseuse’s
hand. ‘Drink, Victoire, it will chase away this demon madness, and give you back gladness and courage.’

‘Where are my children?’ I sprang from the chair and scurried around searching for Blandine and Gustave. ‘I must go to them … too young to be alone.’ But when I couldn’t find them, and I felt exhausted from looking, the heartache pushed me down to the cold floor.

At first I didn’t realise the surging sound — a pure sound from Hell — came from within me. I only understood they were my screams when the people clamped their hands over their ears. I covered my ears too, and I felt the noise moving away from me, seeping beneath the floorboards and echoing from the cracks in the stone walls.

Why were they all reeling from me and gazing, wide-eyed, as if I was some monstrous stranger? Even Grégoire and Françoise, clutching my Madeleine, and little Emile and Mathilde. But I did not want to look at their children, whose names only made me think of my lost parents.

Léon too, seemed wary, hesitant. ‘This cannot go on, Victoire.’

He helped me up from where I lay on the ground and pushed a folded paper into my hand. ‘A letter from your cook friend. Maybe that will cheer you.’

Through the confusion beleaguering my mind, I could barely read Claudine’s words.

My dear
Victoire,

Still no news from you, my friend. It has been such a time. I am beside myself with worry and pray your lack of correspondence is simply the fault of our terrible postal service.

I hope Armand recovered from his plough injury and that you all, and
L’Auberge des Anges,
survived the terrible winter.

I don’t know if the news reached you in the south, but all of Paris is talking of the diamond necklace affair. An impoverished aristocrat, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, devised a plan to regain what she says is her family
château
, stolen by the Crown. Pretending to be one of the queen’s most intimate confidants, she tricked the Cardinal de Rohan into believing the Queen wanted to buy this very expensive necklace.

They have arrested the Cardinal and thrown him into the Bastille. The woman too, was arrested. People are jumping with excitement as this scandal has damaged the Queen’s reputation beyond repair!

I hope to receive your letter soon.

Yours affectionately,

Claudine

My tears plinked onto the page, spreading the ink like damp flower petals. I slid from Armand’s chair to the floor, closer to the fireplace. The page quivered in my hand as I held it over the flames. I stared, dry-eyed — because there were, suddenly, no more tears — as the flames curled and blackened the letter I knew I would never answer.

I bent my legs up, hugged my calves and rested my head sideways on my knees. I kept my eyes on the fire, watching and hoping the flames would leap out and engulf me, as they’d swallowed up Félicité and Félix.

I felt around my neck for Maman’s angel pendant, seeking its warmth, and courage. I felt nothing though, and when I couldn’t recall where the angel might be, my groping fingers scrabbled at my skin, raking until blood and gritty flakes stained my nails.

My hand dropped. I was too tired to keep scratching; I would find the angel another day. I let my heavy eyes close.

The flames curled about the table and chairs, the bed, Maman’s medicinal herbs and flowers. It flung its mighty heat against the walls, crumbling them. The smoke choking me, I ran outside and watched, helplessly, as the fire-devil consumed our home. When, finally, the flames dwindled, I reeled in horror at the two small, blackened skeletons resting in its embers.

A raven circled above me — slow, perfect arcs on extended wings. It swung in curves, faster and faster, carving mad spirals through the air. A ridge of goosebumps prickled my arms, the coldness slithering down my back.

Maman and Papa laid Félicité and Félix onto the back of a cart piled high with other dead children. We all stood and waved as the cart rumbled off, right into the path of an elegant coach the colour of ox blood. The coach thundered into the cart, overturning it. Corpses spilled out. Pieces of Papa’s body were strewn across the road.

The raven swooped down from a branch overhanging the riverbank. It began pecking at the bits of my father and I saw it had a jagged scar over its left eye.

‘Stop, no stop!’ I struck the bird with a stick, over and over.

Morsels of flesh dangling from its beak, the raven thrust itself at my face, pecking at my eyes until it almost blinded me. It flapped its wings and flew off across the river, a basket swinging from its bloodied beak.

The basket fell from its beak into the water, spinning faster and faster on the current. From inside, the small screams, ‘Maman, Maman!’ weakened as the basket twirled away, beyond my reach.